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Discourse on the Plight of the Eastern Human
The following is a collection of essays written between two debating institutions, the Royal Institute of Truth and Orn tel Imen in Telinor. The original essay, The Plight of the Eastern Human was written by Doctor Adrien Ignatian hoping to promote a response from his own people. At the time of writing in the year 710LN which was a year patronised by the god Aureon and so saw many essays and discussions written, this debate was one of a few that involved an exchange between Telinor and Grostere. The First Essay by Ignatian From the Journal of Etanian Sciences 710 Long Night, in the Year of Aureon the Enlightened, penned by Doctor Adrien Ignatian, primary historian to His Majesty Solrei IV. Writing on the Plight of the Eastern Humans subject to the Falsehoods of Stovakor, the following is protected by His Majesty’s word and should be taken as true by all who read it. I would first like to thank his Majesty for this opportunity that he has presented me with to explain and expand my views this important issue that has since fallen out of the sphere of debate as well as the public consciousness. I hope to bring back the once loftily held discussion over the fate of our kin in the north-east where they live under the yoke of the elven vampires. I would also like to take the time to thank my peers Doctor Marcellen Filfileal and Father Tomir of the Church of the Truth, to whom this paper was made possible. I shall begin with what we know for certain, the undisputable truth of the history of our failures. At the closing days of the two hundredth and nineteenth years since our war with the Empire of the Elvenkind, those that claimed to hold the sin of immortality beyond Elysium fled their grand palaces, their many lies laying exposed in the sun. As they travelled eastward they cut down the peoples they encountered, their path made easier by the mages of Telinor binding Pelor’s light above them preventing its power from scorching the beasts from Tolas. The monsters fed on men, woman and children as they spent months cloaked in shadow masking them from Pelor’s wrath. Finally they were stopped by the Great Sea, taking root in the hidden city of Stovakor, its innocent human populace taken hostage by the elven monsters unable to receive any help from their former masters across the sea where they too had befallen to an unknown calamity. A year passes, the great states of Etan are left reeling from the strike against them from the monsters, the dwarves seal their great gates and lock themselves up in their holds, the elves of the forests are spared the wrath of their kin, the forked tongued liars in Sang allow their human subjects to fall before the beasts whilst they remain secure on their unhallowed ground. Meanwhile, our great city takes it upon itself to guard those that fled the exodus and welcome them into our homes. Truly this attack upon the goodly races of Etan was not met as it should have been, with a march on the forest to rout out our shared enemy, instead our King’s calls for action was met by stony silence. It is from this first year that we see the mind-set of the threat posed by Stovakor, leave it be, let them stay within their forests, let them rot. But these corpses do not rot, and it is those same corpses that remain gorging themselves on the forsaken men and women of that lone city, the same criminals that slew the ancestors of many of you readers are allowed to walk free in their palaces of blood. Now, the questions emerge from the common folk; why do the living not just flee the dead, leave the city’s confines whilst Pelor’s light guards them? Why do the people of the city not retake their once great home for themselves and lay the bloodsuckers low? And why have the vampires not torn themselves apart as was predicted by the scholars of the time? I shall answer each of these questions beginning with the last as it displays how the Truth of today from which authority I write this, has surpassed those men that clung to the ancient texts from the eastern lands that hold little relevance to modern thought. The years following the first Long Night was subject to much debate among the learned men of the Middle Lands with the central concern being what the future would hold in regards to these vampires now unshackled from their isles in the west and free to scour our people. The wisest men across Etan were summoned to the court of then King Légar II to give counsel on the monsters that had infested our shores, there they debated and argued with oft a foul word being exchanged with true passion unlike todays debates which are bound by codified law and centred around the Truth. Their consensus reached was that the vampires would starve themselves by the turn of the century at the extreme end of their estimations. A belief based on the agreement that the vampires had killed everyone in the city as they had as they moved east. This, the good King Légar II took on with a heavy heart and went to helping those that he could in his own realm. It was this false perception, one obviously lead by those that prescribed to the ancient schools of Farthrown that held that one can understand the facts of the world through observation and not on the Truth as we understand today. This fatal misjudgement has left us in the situation we find ourselves in and it was not until the year four hundred and fifty that we even knew there were survivors within Stovakor, in that time the vampires had grown strong behind their dark wooden veil, giving them time to enslave totally the peoples of that land. It was the mistakes of those texts from the east that have lead us to the situation we find ourselves in. On to the second question, why can the peoples of Stovakor not rise up against their oppressors and retake their city? Of course such a question of rebellion would be abhorrent in the civilised lands of the world and grounds for the most severe of punishment, but in regards to the unjust, unlawful and unholy rule of Stovakor it is an apt and reasonable question. Through utilisation of the Truth and what we know of the vampiric kindred thanks to the efforts of the talented doctors and brave inquisitors that pursue the once forbidden knowledge, we can say that obviously the mental domination abilities of the vampires and their foul necromancy is to blame for the cowing of the denizens of Stovakor. We know that all vampires possess the ability to control the minds of their victims, especially once their blood is consumed, obviously the vampires are able to coerce any admission of rebellion and eliminate the threat before it is able to bloom, thus no organised militia can be formed such as in Sang when Lord Protector Tane overthrew the false Church of the Three. Then of course, should any rebellion go unnoticed by the monsters then they obviously rely on the practice of necromancy sending legions of their victims out into the streets to terrorise the population, leaving the peasant petrified in his hovel and off the streets in any form of protest. Thus the city has obviously become a bastion against those that dwell inside it, a cage from which freedom cannot be found, which brings us to the first question. Why do they not flee the city? This is one of the questions asked not just by the common folk when quizzed on topic but one of the first questions asked by new students seeking to learn the Truth. The answer is simple once one has a frim understanding of the Truth; the denizens of Stovakor have no idea that there is an escape. This fact is obvious once you know who they were before the coming of the vampires, exiles from their lands in the east, totally reliant on the ancient empire of Orjer for survival, keeping contact with the natives to near zero. Locked away in their forest they remained ignorant of the comings and goings of Etan, and the vampires would have seen this and used it to their advantage spreading the lies that there is nought beyond the borders of the wood, or that mayhaps it extends on to the edge of the world or some other such nonsense taking advantage of their limited eastern understanding of Tolas’ geography. Thus they have become prisoners of their own ignorance and once again victims of the ancient texts brought from Farthrown. This year marks the seven hundredth and tenth year since the first Long Night, the nights where the children of Pelor were slaughtered in their thousands. While this may seem like the distant past for many of you, we still feel the burden of those nights today and the scars still remain on the country sides of the Sang Valley and in the streets of Grostere herself, and still, there are reports of dealings with the usurpers, humans that seem to have forgotten the past so as to line their pockets with gold and platinum. What I know to be the truth, and thus the correct course of action, is for our grand soldiers to march on Stovakor and demand the heads of all these so called “lords”. Ours is the greatest kingdom in Etan and it is through our leadership that a new age, of hope and peace and spiritual growth, et cetera. can finally come forward, ending this Long Night and ushering in a New Day. The Response by the Ancient Applicator Ianten Dictated by the Ancient Applicator of Orn tel Imen through use of the stenotype spell in the year 1/364 or 710LN and translated into the Common Tongue on campus, published by his own authority with approval by the Artistic Administrator Ohatan Arisa for dissemination amongst the campus and abroad. A response to ‘The Plight of the Eastern Humans subject to the Falsehoods of Stovakor’ by Adrian Ignation of Grostere. “The man that claims to know the truth has given up on the pursuit of it.” I sit here in my office on the thirty seventh floor of the tree where I have a view looking east across the canopy to the horizon, and just where beyond the edges of the rod's influence where weather unbound by a schedule has produced dark clouds filled with heavy rain from the Northern Ridge Mountains that lines the top of the continent. Beyond those dark clouds lies the Sang Valley and beyond that the twin forest to the one I call home where the city once known as Vorakor lies. There it has been taken over by a group of vampires, some part of the original group but most descended from the exiled Quel’Doran Imperial family. This is known, as the good doctor Ignation has laid out, having taken place over seven hundred years ago and now serves as the epoch event for the Common Calendar utilised by many in Etan. I call your attention now to that very essay written by Ignatian, where he details the beliefs of the scholars of Grostere towards the issue of Stovakor. I will now begin to examine some of the points made in that essay and offer some counter-points to expand on the ideas presented by Ignatian. I shall begin by addressing the anti-elf rhetoric on display in this text and an apparent misunderstanding of the actions of the state of Telinor during the Long Night. Now while I live in an city where humans and elves are able to coexist peacefully I understand that this is not the case all over Etan but I would hope that one could keep these prejudices confined to personal thoughts rather than the academic. Now in regards to the perception that Telinor hoarded the sun’s light that prevented it reaching other parts of the world displays the lack of inquiry into this topic by Grostere’s historical study. As the records of the meetings of the Council of Telinor show it was decreed by that group once the threat from the exiled vampires from the west was acknowledged that the moon would be tethered above Telinor and angled to reflect as much of the sun’s light at night as possible and for the sun itself to have as few obstructions during the day as possible. We did not as seems to be the belief in Grostere, lock the sun in place and keep it for ourselves, Telinor may be powerful but we have no control over the movements of the sun. I point you towards the work by our college’s very talented Astral Analyser and her recent work on heliocentrism calculation would be quite enlightening. Moving on from that misconception, I have to agree with Ignation’s belief that the vampiric advance eastward was halted by the sea but I believe there is more to that. Though only the primary group that took the route around Telinor forest and not the secondary group that swung up north through the New Olian Mountains towards the Northern Tribed. Looking at likely routes to have been taken by the vampires following their assault on Sang City it would appear that they followed the Sang River eastward from the northern bank, feasting on the mainly sporadic pasture farming villages until they reached the forests surrounding Vorakor. Once there they were presented with a choice, head south towards Menrek where the dwarves had had prior warning to their approach, building runic defences to ward against the vampire’s inability to cross certain thresholds, head north where the meagre pickings of the Ruskar and Northern Tribes would be all that could sustain them, head back the way they came which was now mostly depopulated and thus unlikely that half of them would make the return journey or head into the forest. Clearly they chose the latter, which is interesting because the forests that surround Stovakor are quite well known to this day to be completely inhospitable, even the hardiest of ranger has fallen victim to a myriad of monsters and hostile flora, we can assume that the vampires also had to traverse this obstacle and fight their way through to the city at the heart of the forest. Once there it must have seemed like their very own Celestian Throne, but we shall develop that more later. The purpose of Ignatian’s writings appears to be to spur the debate amongst the readership of Grostere and also it seems to spur some action against Stovakor, an idea, while holding some merit in terms of moral assertion but lacking in common sense and an understanding of one’s own history that it almost beggar’s belief how someone so ignorant gained such a position of scholarship in any academic institution. Now, to begin with, King Légar II was little more than I child at the time of the Long Night and was under the control of his ministers, thus he spoke with their voice which was that of aged men unwilling to accept any more of the already massive influx of refugees fleeing the north, so any action against the forest would result in either a defeat meaning massive losses to the forest and the vampires or a victory which would mean massive losses and more refugees to be cared for by the then very weak state of Grostere. To move onto the three questions asked and answered by Ignation starting as he does with the question of why did the vampires not fall to infighting as predicted. Ignatian dismisses the concept by attributing blame to the original generation of scholars that clearly misjudged the situation and that action should have been taken rather than discussion. But this does not answer the valid question, why did the vampires not just consume their food source and then leave or fall to the political infighting that was witnessed during the Quel’Doran Civil War. Though I do not claim to know the answer, as all scrying attempts into Stovakor have failed either due to the forest’s magic or wards set up by the vampires, I can offer several suggestions to why this is the case. Firstly that the experience in the Civil War changed many of the vampires, they may have realised that such political infighting would be their downfall again if they allowed it to fester as it did in the west. Secondly, that the forest may have served as prison for them, not just the denizens within, trapping them inside with a limited food source that need to be managed rather than over-exploited. Thirdly, fear of a reaction by Etan would have enticed them to remain hidden from the world for as long as possible until they were ready to defend themselves, a long game any immortal creature would have been willing to play. And finally do not be so quick to dismiss the voices of your past, we retained much of what you have abandoned in our archives and there is much as yet of value to be learned from Farthrone. Why have the humans of Stovakor not overthrown their masters and retaken the city for themselves? Well firstly, there are not just humans in Stovakor, there are tieflings, half-elves, half-orcs and various other groups in the city including the seemingly new creation of the ratfolk spawned from it, so when one considers that there must have existed various factions and groups divided along racial boundaries as we see elsewhere, it is probably to assume that these groups are either un-united or are unequally treated by the vampires, though as it was a colony of a Farthrone empire it is possible that other cultural boundaries were more important than race. From what little contact has been made through less than savoury third party groups it would seem that travel in and out of Stovakor is limited both by the forest and by the vampires’ edict, this would mean if there was to have been or to be any overthrow of the vampire’s control of the city it would either need to come from within or involve a massive commitment of resources to invade and occupy the region as subversive methods and providing of armaments for the population was and remains unfeasible. Though I admit I am frankly just as ignorant of the goings on in Stovakor as the good doctor and so cannot say whether or not mental domination techniques and organised terror are not employed by the vampires to keep the populace cowed. Ignation’s final question, why have the humans not fled, is one he claims is asked by many a first year student in his institution, which is a reasonable enough question as the desire for freedom from fear is common to all the mortal races of the world and is easily the first fear we have when such a terrible regime would be forces upon us. Ignation answers this question by stating that the denizens of Stovakor are ignorant of the world beyond their forest, once again blaming the long history of Farthrone for leaving its descendants ignorant of the world. But I have a few more suggestions, mayhaps the people there have a strong connection to the city and refuse to abandon it to the dead, mayhaps the living are a lot more autonomous than we have been lead to believe within the city and are attempting reform, or in my opinion far more likely and far more terrifying; the people are content. Looking at it from a perspective of a people that had just lost contact with their founding land, trapped in a hostile environment surrounded by chaos and suddenly having an order brought in from the shadows, a group bringing stability and a hierarchy to be manipulated and ascended through for merit akin to the Orjerian system most likely in place previously. It would be tempting to simply accept the price of this regime, whatever the most likely gruesome price is. I shall end with an open question to add to the debate, what does the future hold for Stovakor? Will she become integrated into Etan’s ever growing community or remain marginalised, as a threat in the shadows? Only time will tell, something the vampires of Stovakor have in abundance. Category:In-World Concepts Category:Stovakor